A Book about Students-journalists' Rebellion of the Period of Sixtiers

The third issue of "Ukrainian Information Space" (2019, part 1/3) published an article by Mykhailo Skoryk, a well-known Ukrainian opposition journalist, representative of the Sixtiers, entitled "Rebellion at Kyiv university Faculty of journalism in 1965 as a students’ reaction to the beginning of Khrushchev’s Thaw drawdown". It ended with the fact that the author intended to continue this topic. It was about the ultimate need to record the memories of that rebellion survivors and to write and publish biographical stories about each of them, based exclusively on archival materials.

We have good news: the author kept his word and presented the newly published book to the editors. It was published at the end of 2019 in Kyiv publishing house "Kyt" and is entitled "In the Fire of Own Heart. Students’ rebellion — the year 1965".

This book is a continuation of a documentary study by the author "The Case of Matvii Shestopal" — one of the peers of the Ukrainian Sixtiers. Almost forgotten now Personality, the memory of which returns from oblivion only recently. Matvii Shestopal, an associate professor, candidate of philological sciences, and a journalist-practitioner with long-term experience in the central newspapers, was dismissed from the position of professional disciplines teacher at the Faculty of Journalism. Almost all students of Kyiv journalism faculty defended their favorite teacher.

That kind of rebellion turned out to be unheard of for party ideologues and gained wide publicity. An ultimatum letter was sent to the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine. ‌The position of future journalists was as follows: "If Associate Professor M. Shestopal is not renewed at the faculty, all those who signed below will leave the university".

The letter was signed by 67 students of different faculty courses. The system dealt harshly with the signatories, including the author of this book.

Many years later, Mykhailo Skoryk decided to go to the archives in search of an answer to a question that had been troubling him throughout his difficult journalistic biography: what happened to each of those 67 signatories?

An excerpt from this book will guide the reader in its immutability, recognizability and relevance.